HAES(TM) Business Mastermind Holiday Health Blog Hop - Self-Support

HAES^TM Business Mastermind Holiday Health Blog Hop

12 December 2014

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin

If you HATE that song, “What do the lonely do at Christmas,”  and want to obliterate whatever device that has the audacity  to play such a melancholy tune to you during the holiday season – This Blog Hop is for you.

I don’t have a significant other (other than my dog, who is great but really….), or functional family or nearby friends who have time for me, or far away friends who even have time to talk to me very often.  So the overwhelming cultural myth of the happy extended family gatherings and romantic findings and celebrations from the last Thursday in November… to New Year’s Day, can really bring me down.  Do you feel me?

In addition to those factors, the holidays -- whether you’re a religious devotee or an atheist, have an, “eat mindlessly, stuff yourself and pledge to starve yourself come New Year’s Day,” sort of mandate that doesn’t mix with HAES^TM. 

Here are a few hints for those of us for whom the holiday just rubs in our face all the good things, people, support and connections we DON’T have in our lives that makes it even harder to be grateful for the good we DO have:

Ѽ There’s a new commercial this year whose refrain is, “Eat a snack,” sung to the tune of “(If you’re happy and you know it,) Clap your hands”. If you hear this commercial TURN IT OFF IMMEDIATELY.  Unless of course you have a clapper for the device it’s playing on, then you can actually clap your hands.  Or, if you can bear to listen all the way through just one last time, do so and note the product it promotes. Google the maker and send their consumer affairs office an email that says basically, “I’m not buying your product because of this commercial that promotes mindless eating and stuffing our emotions even if it is candy-coated in a catchy commercial tune that harkens back to my childhood. And SHAME ON YOU.”

Ѽ Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer was alone and dissed during the holidays.  But the very characteristic that made him a pariah was finally deigned by the Big Guy (Santa or insert your own deity.) to be the PERFECT one to save the day.  You’re alone, take advantage of it.  Sing Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the top of your lungs and dance wildly around the house, while thinking about the above.  It makes me feel better.  And even if it doesn’t work for you, if you keep doing it, you’ll get tired as heck, go to sleep, BINGO – one less day in this season to feel miserable.  No self-criticism about your voice or your body during any of these exercises, or any other time, any time of the year – is allowed.

Ѽ If you have a pet who will play with you (a dog or a cat who is ready to roll when YOU are rather than the other way around), set a timer and play with her for at least 10 minutes.  If you don’t have a pet who will play with you, or at all, do a little online research about what kind of dog would suit your circumstance (Tiny apartment? Tiny budget? Allergies?).  There’s plenty of helpful techniques online you never even thought of and you’re a blog hopper right?  Finish reading this and then hop on over there and see.  Or volunteer for your local Humane Society.  If there’s no opportunity to be trained to work with the animals until after the holidays, sign up for when it is available, put it on your calendar and do another round of Rudolf. BTW ALWAYS ADOPT. If you wonder why I say this, Google, “Why you should adopt rather than purchase a pet.”

Ѽ Okay, here’s the last one.  Write/journal about what you would be doing right now in your FANTASY relationships with ideal family, friends, lover/spouse… if you had one.  Many folk say this will help manifest these situations in your life, if you do it consistently and allow yourself to believe, the same way allow everything outside the movie you love… to slip away when you watch it. Or…just go watch one of those movies…If it’s sad you can cry, not for yourself mind you but those poor, unfortunate characters in the story.  You can laugh too if you’ve got a funny one.  Back to that manifestation thing…hasn’t worked yet for me but I’m still livin’.  So who knows?  It sure doesn’t hurt.

So maybe one of these ideas catches your fancy and works for you.  Maybe reading this reminded you of something you used to do that helped and you’re going to try it again.  May be you haven’t heard any new ideas here to make the holidays less painful for you (Sorry!  I tried!).  Remember in any case, you are not alone in your aloneness.  Many put on a good face but are not connected to the people they do have in their lives the way they appear to be or talk about.  The very reason the media messages that say everyone’s loved and in-the-loop (except me…or you) become media messages is that they reinforce a cultural myth that few if any real people have completely. 

Though others may have bigger pieces of the pie, I don’t think anyone has the whole pie.  But if you’ve been practicing mindful eating you already know that you aren’t really hungry for the whole pie, usually just a dab will do ya’.  Even if that dab looks darn far away today, keep plugging and shine that gorgeous red nose of yours.  Santa may be calling on you soon.

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Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a member of the HAES^TM Business Mastermind, a HAES^TM feminist minister, performance poet, author and college professor specializing in race, gender, size and the media.  

“Alabama Voices: ‘Just Sayin’’ Column Unfair to Overweight Children,”

• Daufin, E-K. “Alabama Voices: ‘Just Sayin’’ Column Unfair to Overweight Children,” December 16, 2010, p. 3C.

Josh Moon’s “Just Saying” Sunday was “Just Stinking.”  Instead of writing that prejudiced, inaccurate, offensive tripe, Moon ought to shut his big obese mouth.  Moon uses the word “grossly” rather than “very” to indicate the level of heaviness for kids, giving the impression throughout the article that he thinks fat children are gross – period.  He refers to heavy kids as “pudgy” and to how they ought to be sent to “waddle” into school. 

Even the headline says, “Let’s get our obese kids active”… as if we should send them on a death march of shame.  Moon reminds me of a video I was shown as part of a nationally syndicated TV dating program.  The video of one potential suitor showed an average looking guy who said he had no problem dating plus size women because he would get in his car and “run them down to size.”  Ehhh! I passed on him and the Montgomery Advertiser ought to pass on any more of Moon’s columns.

I do agree with Moon that those who want to keep Congress from getting junk food out of school lunches are not playing with a full pack of Skittles.  However ALL kids need to be encouraged to be more active, the ones who have the kind of metabolism that allows them to eat packs of potato chips without packing on the pounds and the ones who eat a banana and blow up.  Don’t assume that skinny kids are healthy, active OR eating well.  Even as adults are forced to do more online for work and in life, all of us, fat and thin could use more physical activity as we struggle more and more to keep an offline life. 

No, weight is NOT just a simple equation of too much food and not enough exercise.  Not all fat people have terrible eating habits and not all thin people are at peace with the food pyramid. Shame on Moon for perpetuating that insulting stereotype.

Moon says when he was in school, “No one turned down that hour of basketball, football or dodge ball.”  He goes on to castigate kids who, “…spend the hour walking around the track or football field.”  He probably just didn’t notice the children who may have been more sensitive than him…the ones who didn’t like getting beat up for a ball or battered by sadistic dodge ball throwing demons.  Or perhaps he was one of the kids teasing the fat children about how they looked in gym shorts or giggled when the fleshy kids jiggled in motion.  

As a Native New Yorker, I know that most urban children don’t have safe or pleasant places in which to be physically active, especially if they don’t get a charge out of combative forms of competitive group sports.  Perhaps Moon doesn’t know the humiliation of everyone treating you like a pariah, a gorilla in a gym suit who is a convenient target to vent any misplaced hostility thinner demons may have. 

Moon’s nasty, ignorant, fataphobia only makes more people of size more ashamed and an easier target for the abominable harassment and battery to which we are already subject.  Fat children are the most likely to be teased.  Fat adults are derided constantly in the media and in the mimicking even supposedly well meaning community.  The prejudice against fat people is often called the only socially acceptable bigotry left in mainstream America, and fat females are usually treated more severely than fat males. 

Also African Americans, American Indians and Latinos are more likely to be fat than Whites and Asians.  So Moon’s little tirade was also indirectly patriarchal and White supremacist.    I’ve applied for a sabbatical from my university to work on a guide for journalists to help them more ethically and accurately cover the king and queen sized of our community.  From Moon’s condescending column, it’s clear there a big fat need for that kind of guidance for journalists here on Earth as well as on the wicked dark side of the Moon.___________________

Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin is a professor of communication at Alabama State University and a national size equity expert.